Konstantin Konstantinowitsch Mamontow

Konstantin Konstantinowitsch Mamontow, 1918

Konstantin Konstantinowitsch Mamontow ( Russian Константин Константинович Мамонтов ; * October 16, 1869 in a stanitsa of the 2nd Don - Okrugs near Nizhne-Tschirskaja ; † February 14, 1920 in Yekaterinodar ) was famous commander of the Russian military and white troops during the Russian civil war .

Life

Konstantin Konstantinowitsch Mamontow, whose family came from the Minsk Governorate , was born on the Don and he has always defined himself as a Cossack . Like his father, who was an officer , Mamontov embarked on a military career in the tsarist army . He graduated from the Nikolai Cadet School in 1888 and the Nikolai Cavalry School in 1890 and took an active part in the Russo-Japanese War as an officer in the First Chita Regiment of the Transbaikal Cossack Army. On August 24, 1912, he was promoted to colonel . During the First World War he was in command of the Nineteenth Don Cossack Regiment from July 1914 to April 1915, in command of the Sixth Don Cossack Regiment from April 8, 1915 to April 1917, and after his promotion to major general from April 1917 to January 1918 in command of the 6th Don Cossack -Division.

Like most Cossacks, Mamontov was an avowed opponent of the Bolsheviks and joined the White Troops of the Volunteer Army at the earliest opportunity . In February 1918 he took an active part in the steppe campaign, led an anti-Bolshevik partisan regiment and in April 1918 took command of the troops of the Second Don, the Ust-Medveditsky and the Choper regions. From July 1918 to February 23, 1919 he was in command of the Eastern Front of the Don region, then the First Don Army. In July 1919 he was entrusted with the command of a newly formed shock force, the Fourth Don Special Corps.

Its aim was to support the attack of General Denikin's troops in 1919, which is called the 1919 Offensive of the Armed Forces of Southern Russia in historical literature, towards Kursk and Voronezh . Mamontov's troops consisted only of cavalry , which on the one hand gave them great mobility and on the other hand enabled them to carry out daring raid-like operations. The greatest success of the Mamontov Corps was the capture of a number of cities in central Russia in August 1919, including Tambov , Yelets and finally, together with General Shkuro's corps , the city of Voronezh. The advance of the Mamontov Corps put the Soviet military leadership on high alert, since Voronezh is only a few hundred kilometers from Moscow .

According to Lenin's personal orders , the best cavalry brigade of the Red Army, under the leadership of Budyonny, was sent against the Mamontov Corps, which succeeded in November 1919 after very hard and costly fighting between Voronezh and Kastornoe and in the Kharkov operation To crush Mamontov. These two offensives were directly linked to the Orel-Kursk operation and were part of a comprehensive counter-offensive by the Soviet southern front. This failure was critical to consolidating Bolshevik power and undermining the morale of anti-Bolshevik forces. Thereupon Mamontov was relieved of his command, but reappointed to his post after a few days.

Mamontov died of typhus on February 14, 1920 in Yekaterinodar during the meeting of white commanders and the Don Region government .

literature

• Valery Klawing. Graschdanskaja wojna w Rossii: belyje armii. Moscow, 2003.
• Sergei Volkov. Enziklopedija grazhdanskoi wojny: Beloje dwischenije. Saint-Petersburg, 2002.